Why would any sane or rational person want any touchscreen support/apps installed on a workstation where all the pro design/graphics/video software they use has a time tested and far more efficient wimp interface and doesnt have a touchscreen display anyway?

Windows is bloated enough already without the need for useless charm bars etc.

Why would any sane or rational person want any touchscreen support/apps installed on a workstation where all the pro design/graphics/video software they use has a time tested and far more efficient wimp interface and doesnt have a touchscreen display anyway?

You already can set Desktop as default boot (windows 8.1 does it itself if you are not on tablet).

Install any of good Start button replacements and you will never see any of touch part.

Only touchscreen mode, even on tablets is useless due to Microsoft allowing only applications developed in their VS and signed by them (ala Apple), and all of them have big restrictions. Hence many good apps actually work in desktop mode.

I recently got an ASUS RJ550K ROG laptop with Win 8.1 on it and ran classic shell as a start button replacement....perhaps it was because of the pre-installed version of Win8.1 on this particular laptop but I always had to deal with apps and touch interface stuff like the charm bar and I didnt want that stuff clogging up my machine any longer not to mention all the ASUS pre-installed bloatware.

Anyway recently added an SSD boot drive and found Win7 x64 drivers for everything and am running Win7 now...couldnt be happier. Thanks for the info.

This is partly a windows 8.1 problem. Asus sells laptops as windows 8.1 but they are just windows 8. It is because at the time they couldn't be upgraded to windows 8.1, I tried several times. Only recently you can update them to windows 8.1 without a problem and after that they run fine for the first time ever. Still the hard drives in these laptops are insane slow and clearly require a SSD to get a more decent user experience. I wouldn't buy these laptops at all.

Still the hard drives in these laptops are insane slow and clearly require a SSD to get a more decent user experience. I wouldn't buy these laptops at all.

:-)

Asus makes many good laptops. Just personal experience. And for normal work most HDDs are pretty fine.
So, do not understand complains. Personally upgraded around 20 computers, tablets and laptops to Win 8.1. Various things can happen, but all are fixable fast and all went smooth in the end.

The original 7200 rpm 750 Gb HDD was very slow and I am glad I ditched it in favour of an SSD drive. Normally I would install the drive myself but ASUS would not honour the warranty if I did that so I had to pay them to do it for me which was disappointing. I also had the RAM upped to 16 Gb at the same time.

It runs far better now with Win7 and is a match for my desktop quad core PC (actually it probably eats it in terms of performance) and CS5 Production Premium is running on it very well.

I dont like running OS upgrades and prefer to do a clean install and image my drives when I have them setup to my satisfaction...

I will consider upgrading to Win9 if I can install in desktop only mode and I can get a proper installer disk from them rather than allowing only an upgrade from my Win8 install...if not MS wont be getting any of my money from now on.

They are alienating a large percentage of their user base by looking to push the cloud computing model that Apple/Google have developed. I am simply not interested in this type of 24/7 online computing...call me old school but I much prefer to have control of what goes on my system and when it gets "updated".

I love it to bits! If a Technical Preview is this polished imagine what the RTM will be like.
I installed on a touchscreen laptop. The funny thing is I'm using touch a lot more than before, now that the full "Metro" is gone.

This is what W8 should have been all along. OS X feels old school now. Wait, it is old school.

Is Microsoft watching your every move on the recently-released Windows 10 Technical Preview? That may be the case thanks to portions of Microsoft's privacy policy, which indicates that the company is using a keylogger, among other methods, to obtain information about the software's performance.

Microsoft also revealed that when users open a file, the company collects information about the file, the program that opens the file and how long it takes to open said file.

Surprise. Something tells me that quite soon we'll see free Windows (for every computer, not tablets) but with special protection from terrorists and pedophiles (always works best) that will store copy of each created file in cloud for inspection and will monitor your usage patters, files and texts to check if you think about anything wrong.

This seems like something they are tracking in the Tech Preview in order to track usage patterns, problems, etc. I doubt this is something that would be done or tolerated in a production release. The developer community is pretty savvy and I have to believe something like this would be found (and the company knows this).

I was suspicious of this release after seeing the direction the company was going with Windows 8, but this looks like a return to sanity. Fingers crossed.

“WE WILL ACCESS, DISCLOSE AND PRESERVE PERSONAL DATA, INCLUDING YOUR CONTENT (SUCH AS THE CONTENT OF YOUR EMAILS, OTHER PRIVATE COMMUNICATIONS OR FILES IN PRIVATE FOLDERS), WHEN WE HAVE A GOOD FAITH BELIEF THAT DOING SO IS NECESSARY TO.”

CORTANA ALSO LEARNS ABOUT YOU BY COLLECTING DATA ABOUT HOW YOU USE YOUR DEVICE AND OTHER MICROSOFT SERVICES, SUCH AS YOUR MUSIC

But you can turn off many of these features to prevent this data gathering?

I'll stick with 7 ! It might say it's data mining is turned off, but are you sure ? They might say it's not in the final release but are you sure ? In light of what's been revealed the last couple of years, I'd guess this is highly suspicious programming done in cooperation with nsa.

“When you acquire, install and use the Program, Microsoft collects information about you, your devices, applications and networks, and your use of those devices, applications and networks. Examples of data we collect include your name, email address, preferences and interests; browsing, search and file history; phone call and SMS data; device configuration and sensor data; and application usage,” reads the privacy statement.

Specifically, Microsoft may collect “voice information” when people use “speech-to-text” features, file information about files that users open, and “typed characters,” meaning text that users compose. Microsoft explains that these bits of potentially very personal and sensitive information are collected to improve, respectively, speech processing, application performance and auto-complete and spell check features. But the disclosures must surely read to privacy advocates like a Stephen King short story.

“Many features that transmit data to Microsoft are enabled automatically. You may not have the option to turn off the transmission of data for certain features in the Program. To stop the transmission of all data, you must completely uninstall the Program from all of your devices,” the statement reads.

@kurth I'm staying with 7 too but it has its problems also. I switched out my hard drive and started getting nasty messages about using pirated software because the serial number didnt match. Had to find a hack to get rid of it, then they stopped sending updates. Had to find a way around that too.

@peternap - yeah ms ....and apple aren't to be trusted. Makes one wonder exactly how much they do know already. I think we're fast approaching the point of no return, where we either allow all this to happen....or disengage completely from digital discourse.